Star Trek creator's widow to voice J.J. Abrams' Enterprise computer

It's almost as if J.J. Abrams is patting nervous Star Trek fans on the back and cooing, "It's OK. Everything's gonna be alright."

Variety reported this week that Majel Barrett-Roddenberry will reprise her role as the voice of the Enterprise computer for Abrams' upcoming Star Trek flick. Barret-Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, voiced the computer for all six Trek series and many of the movies. She also played Christine Chapel in the original series and two of the films as well as "Number One" in Star Trek's original pilot. And who could forget her as Lwaxana Troi, the randy Betazoid from The Next Genertation?

Speaking as a Trek fan, this is great news. It almost has me convinced that Abrams is really trying to respect the franchise while giving it a new spin. The casting of Barrett-Roddenberry should, for a few days at least, calm down fans who say Abrams' movie will be too much of a departure from what we all know and love about Star Trek. Now, if only they could script in a scene with Lwaxana Troi chasing Spock around the Enterprise. Too much?

And there was 2 episodes in "Star Trek: Enterprise" where Captain Archer and/or his crew came into contact somehow with future Federation ships, and she did the voices for these ships (the USS Defiant and USS Enterprise-D, respectively). So that's why it can be said she did the computer voice in that series as well, even though the NX-01 itself doesn't speak.

I'm one of a rare breed of females whose really into Startrek.. Seems like this movie's just going to be Armageddon with Romulans...although it's nice that Majel'll voice the computer..I really hope that's not all J.J. Abrams is going to do to appease the fans...I guess as long as there's no Ben Affleck. Please tell me there's not Ben Affleck in this.

Also, there's a lot of different ways that JJ could have gone to revive the Star Trek franchise in movies, and seeing that he kept the costumes, characters and their mannerisms, ship, terminology (aka treknology), chronology, etc (while of course updating it all a bit), and also made sure to make several nods to the past Star Trek stuff (for example Rura Penthe, Old Spock and his references to previous TOS shows' events, the computer voice, the USS Kelvin's phaser turrets, Christopher Pike and even a tribute to Arex, with the addition of Alnschloss K'Bentayr (ok, maybe not a tribute, but close enough! Can't wait to see he/she/it in action...) )

There's a ton of stuff in that line of thought I'm missing, but I'm not only excited to see this movie, as a Trekker myself (heck, I'm glad that Star Trek will receive this kind of boost! It's been slow for Trekkers, beside the novels (which are really good by the way) since Star Trek: Enterprise), I'm also confident that it is in very good, capable hands and that if you're not specifically thrilled by JJ's involvement, know that he has made sure that he is backed up by Trekkers that knows their stuff. That much is obvious!

May 09 can't come soon enough for me! (well, of course, I'll be buying movie stuff before that date... like the comic book prequel, for example :) Ah, it's good to be a Trekker! (or Trekkie, whichever you prefer))

Cool. Doesn't change the fact that everything we have seen about the movie so far since the original teaser trailer has been practically designed to tell us, "Fuck you. We could care less about what made Star Trek great. We are going to run this thing into the ground until its dead, dead, dead!"